Swype S^3 1.00(18515)

Beside the global push of PR 1.1 for Nokia N8 users, we saw some updates for apps like Foursquare, Wellness Diary Beta, Bubbles and Swype for Symbian S^3 last week. Currently, Swype is only available in landscape mode and many Symbian S^3 users demand the portrait mode being available. For portrait input method the user still need to use the ancient yet useful T9 text input. I personally don’t mind having Swype only in landscape mode; because it serves it’s purpose and replaces the standard primitive landscape keyboard.

‘Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen.’ You can download the latest beta version 1.00(18515) only from the Nokia Betalabs website. If you have the previous version installed on your phone, you’ll need to uninstall it first. Make sure you restart your phone after uninstalling or installing the new Swype update.

First thing you’ll notice after opening Swype is that the keyboard layout is quite different than the version 1.00(13559) available through Ovi Store. The input area is full screen in the new version; the four buttons that were in the top right are now placed on the left side of the keyboard. Because of the move of the four keys, the keys are now significantly smaller. A few have already complained that they rather have larger keys. Check out the screen shots below for the difference explained above.

Above: Version 18515 with full screen text area and smaller keys.

Below: Version 13559 with smaller screen text area and larger keys.

Dictionary

Symbian has not embraced allowing users to choose from the usual standard dictionaries/keyboards without having to change the phone’s product code. I consider that a big annoyance, especially when I like to switch my keyboard to Dutch keyboard or Chinese character input. I remember last summer reading about the N8 having Chinese character input standard on the info page, put that has quickly been removed. This is where Swype comes to the rescue by giving us a cool option to download and install additional keyboard/dictionaries. Swype comes standard with 5 dictionaries (English (UK), English (US), French (Canadian), Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish. See the screen shot below for available dictionaries. The cool thing about the installing dictionaries is that you do not have to change the phone’s product code to get a language beside the 5 standard one. Below is a list of additional languages you can add to Swype:

There is one caveat; the dictionaries above are not compatible with the latest version of Swype and only works with the Ovi Store version.

I have used the latest Swype for one day before deciding to switch back to the older version. I like the older keyboard layout and the ability to use Dutch language dictionary. According to information on Betalabs: ’New languages dictionaries will be made available that will be compatible with all versions of Swype. Look for those coming up very soon.’ I will wait until then before giving version 18515 another try.

The NokiaInnovation team would like to thank you for reading this article and let us know if you have any questions regarding and we will try to answer them or forward them to the correct party. If you have any feedback on the latest or previous versions, you can log into Betalabs and leave your feedback there.